By Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan
The Pear Lake Winter Hut offers the perfect basecamp for skiing Sequoia. Check out more of the country’s finest backcountry ski huts at backpacker.com/huts. photo: Bergreen Photography
Your idea of a perfect weekend: ripping down the snowy slopes of 11,000-foot Sierra peaks by day, then kicking back at a cozy, timber-and-stone log home hut by night. Your backcountry heaven: Pear Lake Winter Hut.
This 10-person log home shelter in a snowy bowl at 9,200 feet—more intimate and surrounded by more skiable terrain than neighboring Yosemite’s better-known Ostrander Ski Hut—requires a strenuous, 6-mile ski or snowshoe trip to reach, making it best for intermediate to advanced winter travelers with avy know-how.
Once you’ve called your bunk in the log home, earn your turns on challenging ski runs with views over barbed Sierra summits or snowshoe through quiet conifer forests and up steep ridgelines—or don’t. Somebody’s gotta keep the pellet stove fed and make the hot toddies. Season December to April Lodging $40/person per night; apply for a spot through the lottery which is being drawn on November 2 this year.
This story was originally published on Backpacker.com.
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